Review: Biting Cold by Chloe Neill (Chicagoland Vampires Book 6)

Warning!

Minor spoilers ahead for earlier books in the series.

In book six of the Chicagoland Vampires series, twenty-eight-year old vampire Merit is on the hunt, tailing a rogue supernatural intent on stealing an ancient artefact that could leash catastrophic evil on the world. But, as she soon discovers, she is also the prey: An enemy of Chicagoland is hunting her, and he'll stop at nothing to get his hands on the artefact.

Book five in the Chicagoland Vampires was a rollercoaster of a novel that ended rather dramatically with the return of Ethan from the dead and the fall of Mallory to the dark side.

Biting Cold follows on immediately from the events in that book and sees Merit and Ethan go on a road trip away from Chicago in an attempt to prevent Mallory from getting her hands on a book of magical evil. To complicate matters, the former mayor of Chicago, Seth Tate, a magical being of unknown origin - who lost his mind around book four  - is also hunting the book.
Magical tomes of evil aside, the book is loaded with vampire politics and the growing racial tensions between the humans and supernatural creatures.

Needless to say, Merit and Ethan have their hands full and both operate on their default settings and by that I mean that Merit wants to chase down the bad guy and whack 'em with a sword and Ethan shuts off his feelings and pushes Merit away because, you know, timing.
I was on board with Merit's plan but I was really hoping that she'd whack Ethan upside the head with her bloody sword because the back and forth with him is exhausting and you'd think a case of being dead would give the guy some perspective!
I guess, in the end, it works out well and from here Ethan and Merit will go from strength to strength but their relationship (non-relationship?) was annoying in this one.

Want to know what else was a bit annoying? Mallory.
However, I liked how people didn't give up on her but at the same time have not brushed aside or easily forgiven all that she did and caused.
That girl has a lot of things to atone for in later books and top of that list for me is breaking Catchers heart with her selfish, megalomaniac, bullshit.

All in all, Biting Cold felt like a transition book. It felt like it was needed to round off this phase of the storyline and set up the next but because of that it was mixed bag of tricks that was missing something vital. 

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“The world isn’t perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn’t apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it’s about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn’t perfection. The point is doing it anyway.”

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